AIDS

Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

n. A severe immunological disorder caused by the retrovirus HIV, resulting in a defect in cell-mediated immune response that is manifested by increased susceptibility to opportunistic infections and to certain rare cancers, especially Kaposi's sarcoma. It is transmitted primarily by exposure to contaminated body fluids, especially blood and semen.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

n. a serious (often fatal) disease of the immune system transmitted through blood products especially by sexual contact or contaminated needles

Etymologies

a(cquired) i(mmune) d(eficiency) s(yndrome).

(American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)

Examples

It started in the 1980s when the disease was termed GRID Gay Related Immune Deficiency; President Reagan refused to even say the word AIDS for four years and the epidemic decimated entire communities in this country all the while.

The medical community, meanwhile, tends to refer to the sickness on a case-by-case basis, by the names of diseases associated with it, before correctly identifying the disease and using the term AIDS acquired immunodeficiency syndrome by 1982.

Those whose lives have been touched by the AIDS crisis will well remember how the United States Government tried to avoid even mentioning the word "AIDS" during the Reagan administration even as close personal friends of the President and his wife --like Roy Cohn -- succumbed to the disease.

Before the premature deaths of Zontal and Partz in 1994, the trio had ensconced themselves with international cult status chiefly for what became the premiere icon of the Age of AIDS -- their mimicry of Robert Indiana's 1960's LOVE paintings unto which they supplanted, in Indiana style and a variety of colors, the word AIDS.